Mistakes

“Lets ride it down the hill, it will hold.” Ryan said to me that afternoon. We had just managed to combine two of Ryan’s old tricycles into one with some string, tape and a piece of wood. It didn’t look like much but the vehicle we had assembled seemed like it would be fun and sturdy enough ride down a hill. So we did it, I was on the back portion, we were about 30 feet down a 200 foot hill and I noticed that the piece of wood we had used to hold the second bike to the first was coming apart. We were picking up speed and I thought that the only thing to do was jump off, rather than have the bikes come apart and suffer the consequence of a high-speed crash on pavement. So I jumped, bad idea.That only led to a broken wrist, 4 broken fingers and 8 stitches. It turns out that probably getting on the contraption in the first place was the mistake

Every human makes mistakes, they are inevitable. Mistakes can be both physical and mental. A mental mistake can be far worse than a physical one and can take a greater toll on the individual. Mental scars do not always heal as fast as physical ones. In Ishiguro’s novel the reader learn about Ono’s past mistakes and his efforts to cope with them as well as the lack to move on from them.

The novel creates four ways to justify and cope with mistakes: forget, forgive, punish, and reconcile through open acknowledgment. The most detrimental mistake of Ono that Ishiguro bring out is when he turned in Kuroda for creating paintings that were unpatriotic to Japan. Ono’s title was the Cultural Committee of the Interior Department for Unpatriotic Affairs. The job was simple, he was to compile a list of names, anyone that he suspected to be unpatriotic in WWII and discipline them in the correct fashion. Ono indulged in the power and lost track of his true self, he thought the act was completely undamaging. But after going to visit Kuroda and seeing the ransack apartment and the destruction that he had inadvertently caused, Ono went back to the council and expressed his grief. Soon the reader finds out that Ono was the reason that Kuroda was imprisoned. Ono had made a mistake and things were no longer in his grasp, his power position was all the sudden not so powerful.

Ono seems to look back and reconcile about the situation until he encounters Enchi which blames him for Kuroda’s imprisonment and suffering. Then, Ono tries to push the blame away from himself, ensuing that he is not a traitor and Kuroda had it coming. Ono switches back into power mode and states that he will not let Kuroda ruin the image he has created for himself. Ono felt no remorse and insists that none of his actions were wrong. The traitor like actions of Ono were undermined by his daughters visit, Kuroda did not matter.

Ono has not followed any of the four ways to deal with one’s mistakes. He has not forgotten about Kuroda, he obviously is not punishing himself because he is more worried about his daughters visit than putting a good friend in jail and has not reconciled the even through past acknowledgement. In some aspects Ono has forgiven himself, but I believe it is to cope with the fact that he knows he is wrong and by forgiving himself he able to keep his “perfect” image